Monday, December 15, 2008

Maybe we should have paid more attention in school, but we can't make heads or tails of this fancy flowchart, which puts Reston into its proper perspective, somewhere between Greenhills, Ohio, and Newfields, Ohio. Apparently, you start with Jamestown, subtract the malaria, and you get a "company town," like Lowell, Mass., then subtract the distasteful child labor, and you get a "greenbelt town" like Greenbelt, Md., then replace the green with a bunch of earth tones, and you get a "Corporate New Community" like Reston, which as we all know, was a product of an oil company attempting to diversify. But it doesn't stop there! Apparently Reston inspired an actual federal law, the Title VII New Community Developing Act, which funded a dozen or so communities before the project was scrapped during the presidency of history's greatest monster, Jimmy Carter, the end.